Invitation.

The music played on, and the mismatched dance went on with it.

Jack and Ugli watched from behind the balcony curtains.

“Want to dance too? We can’t go near the stage, but nobody minds if you mess around in the corners.”

“No thanks — I already told you I’m not going out there. What if someone catches us talking in the southern tongue?”

“Who’s going to catch anything if we’re just dancing? How many steps have you taken past this balcony and the buffet table on this whole vac— I mean, business trip?”

Ugli, offering no reply, simply smiled and sipped at his glass.

After savoring a few more mouthfuls, he pressed in close and changed the subject.

“Let’s play a game only we can play up here.”

“You can’t dance, can you.”

Jack snickered, not entirely displeased, and looped an arm around Ugli’s neck as he teased him.

Five songs later, the two couples finally left the hall.

“We ended up staying longer than I expected.”

“— — ——.”

“One moment, please!”

While the coachman was being readied, someone approached with the click-clack of heels. Despite the urgency in the voice, the footsteps were in no particular hurry.

As the owner of the voice drew nearer, fine chestnut-brown hair caught the light.

“Sev— ah, Miss Sebinya Gobir, is it not? Thank you for the lovely banquet.”

“You came! My best friend! I’m so terribly sorry I couldn’t greet you first. My friends, you see — they kept blocking me, saying I really shouldn’t go anywhere near Lady Aspara!”

She seized Aspara’s hand as she spoke, her tone a wheedling, almost babyish lilt. A pretty little woman.

Best friend, she says.

It wasn’t exactly a lie meant to deceive. Things had been one-sided, but the two of them had, in fact, spent a great deal of time together.

Until the second brother began whispering remarriage into Flower’s ear.

“Hiing, it must have been so hard for you, after you left the estate. I feel just awful about how we parted at the end. But we’re still friends, right?”

“Oh. Yes.”

Sebinya Gobir squeezed Aspara’s hand tightly.

“It’s only natural that Lady Aspara would be jealous of me! I’m sorry that Lord Flower chose me, I really am. But surely this sort of thing wouldn’t ruin our friendship, right? Right? We’re still friends? It’s all in the past now.”

Mm. Right. This is what she was like.

She was absolutely not trying to deceive. Aspara knew from long experience that Sebinya sincerely believed every word she said.

She did not want to say it, but honestly, she thought Sebinya and Flower were an extraordinarily well-matched pair.

May the two of them live happily ever after.

Aspara merely smiled.

She did not dislike this sparkling woman, but neither did she feel enough obligation to pass along what Flower had said to her.

It was partly that she simply did not want to get involved, and partly that she was certain Sebinya, a woman exceedingly fond of men, would believe her husband’s excuses over Aspara’s word any day.

“I just… thank you for the invitation today. And congratulations, truly, on the healthy baby.”

“Oh my, thank you! I hope Lady Aspara has good news to share soon too!”

“There’s no rush.”

“But the thing is, it’s the north, isn’t it? And your partner is the barbarian king. Barbarians do nothing but fight all day — who knows when he might die, right?”

Mm, she does have a point. If Gus dies, I really would be a clog with its string cut loose.

Which is exactly why I tried from the very first night — but being rejected on that front is something I could never tell this woman.

“— — — — —.”

Gus, who had been waiting by the carriage, sensed Aspara’s discomfort and stepped in.

Faced with Gus’s low voice, the kind that would cow most women, or really most anyone regardless of sex, Sebinya beamed brightly.

“Oh my! Is this Lady Aspara’s new attendant? What a lovely voice.”

“I believe it means it’s time for us to go.”

When Aspara answered with appropriate tact, Sebinya threw her arms around her and said:

“Fighting! When Lady Aspara has a son too, you absolutely must invite me!”

“Oh. Yes.”

Jack and Gus hurried the coachman along.

As if peeling off something bothersome, everyone piled into the carriage. Miss Seven stayed by their side until the end, waving and calling out bright farewells.

Sebinya kept swinging her arms in wide arcs to bid them goodbye until the carriage disappeared from view; it was unrefined, but Aspara, too, reached an arm out the window and waved along.

“My lady, do you really not dislike the seven-character woman?”

“How could I dislike someone so guileless? She reminds me a little of you — it’s cute.”

Once the carriage had put enough distance between itself and the estate, Jack hesitated a moment before speaking.

“You know… I heard this thing somewhere. That not hating someone you have every reason to hate isn’t strength of heart — it’s apathy.”

“Where did you hear something like that?”

“Oh, just… some really smart person said it. Someone smart and, well, pretty good-looking…”

Gus briefly raised an eyebrow at Ugli, who had snickered quietly from the front seat.

“Even if it is apathy, what’s so wrong with that? From what I’ve learned in life, there’s nothing to be gained from feeling emotions too strongly.”

“But doesn’t that dull your happiness too?”

“Well…”

Aspara thought for a short but careful moment before answering.

“For today, at least, I was quite happy. I got to see some nice sights.”

“Really? …To be honest, it made me happy too, seeing my lady dressed up in fine clothes and enjoying herself somewhere nice for the first time in so long. And your posture — how you haven’t forgotten a single bit of palace etiquette, still perfectly straight.”

“Flattery.”

“I mean it. Honestly, out of the entire hall, your bearing was the most noble and elegant. And the candy didn’t even fall off — look at that.”

“Hm?”

Aspara’s smile paused.

Candy?

She raised a hand to her head and fumbled at the crown. Her fingertips brushed against something that crinkled.

…

“Why is this still there.”

“You said you weren’t going to eat it, so I left it there this morning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me.”

“It’s pretty. All sparkly.”

“And why didn’t you two say anything…?”

Aspara turned to look at Ugli and Gus, seated beside her.

Ugli pressed down the corners of his mouth, fighting not to laugh. Gus stared blankly back at her with an expression that said, I thought that was a hair ornament.

“…It’s been sitting there since the very beginning?”

“Yep.”

“When I met Flower… and when I met Miss Seven too?”

“It was a little touch-and-go when you greeted that man, but it really held on till the very end!”

“I see…”

Jack plucked the candy from Aspara’s hand as she sat dazed, reconsidering the whole day, peeled off the wrapper, and popped it into her mouth.

To the clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves, the carriage raced north.

We’re done for.

Three days after returning to the north, Ugli opened the storehouse for the first time and thought:

We’re really done for.

Behind the castle’s rear courtyard stood a single stone storehouse.

Originally used for storing gunpowder, it was now filled to the brim with pungent purple flowers. Aspara’s frostbloom herb. For the impoverished Fang Castle, it had become a reasonably nice little earner — and this was where that product was kept.

When word reached him that something had gone wrong in the storehouse, Ugli, who held something like the rank of head attendant among the servants, was summoned.

“What happened here?”

The storehouse floor was damp, the first time they had set foot inside in days.

“It seems someone forgot to close the shutter.”

“The west-facing one, at that!”

The western wind had crept in through the cracked-open window and frozen everything solid. A thin rind of frost still clung to the tops of the straw ropes from which the flowers hung strung and threaded.

The first person to notice the open window had rushed to shut it, but the flowers, having already frozen and thawed once, dangled limply from their ropes like pelts of some furry creature.

“…We need to report this, don’t we?”

“To my lady?”

“Shouldn’t we report to His Lordship first? Everything in the castle belongs to His Lordship, after all.”

“So you’ll be the one to do it, then?”

The entire workforce of the castle fell silent.

Gus was, of course, a respected leader, one who would never be cruel to his own people.

But many still found him uncomfortable, a man who even now remained more soldier than ruler. His self-centered temperament, on an unlucky day, was all too likely to invite a storm. And any topic relating to Aspara was a joker card, impossible to predict which way it would flip, so it was no wonder everyone balked.

“Master Ugli, you go. You’re the closest to him.”

“Ah. So that’s why you called me.”

“Isn’t His Lordship a little more lenient with people younger than him?”

“Don’t look at me. I’ve got a strike on my record from last time. Not happening.”

“Lose if you don’t throw!”

Someone shouted it out of nowhere. Reflexively, everyone gathered round answered in unison:

“Rock, paper—”

Ahh, why did I throw scissors, Ugli sighed as he set off to find Gus.

The castle corridor felt unusually long as he trudged along in search of the lord.

Maybe I should just go straight to that woman instead…

Before he could change his mind, Gus’s hulking shape came into view at the end of his shuffling path.

He was sitting in the courtyard, whittling arrow shafts. That expression was… not too bad, actually.